CFP: The first symposium at the Hub for Critical Cycling Studies
Symposium Co-organizers:
Andrew Bricker (Ghent University, Belgium) and Martin Zeilinger (Abertay University, Scotland)
Ghent, Belgium
The newly founded Hub for Critical Cycling Studies invites presenters to contribute to our inaugural symposium. Join us in taking an active part in envisioning interdisciplinary, self-reflexive, and dynamic futures of cycling research across and beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
***Deadline extended!***
Abstracts due: 16 November 2025!
Our theme: Visions for Critical Cycling Studies Futures
Cycles and their users are deeply entangled in countless different activities and experiences. As a form of situated knowledge rooted in practice, cycling mediates between cyclists and non-cyclists as well as between the social, ecological, political, and cultural environments in which cycling occurs, and which shape the bodily, sensory, cognitive, and affective states of cyclists. In its complexity and multivalence, cycling cuts across issues of power, class, gender, geography, culture, and identity – it is not merely a way of getting around, but a highly dynamic way of being that frames how individuals and communities relate to the world and to each other.
While these ideas are already represented in the work of researchers and campaigners, we think that much is to be gained by pushing cycling scholarship beyond applied, policy-driven, discipline-bound approaches, and by developing an inclusive, intersectional, dynamic, and sustainable framework for ‘Critical Cycling Studies’ (CCS) that aims for fundamentally interdisciplinary and transformative insights. By CCS we do not have in mind any single, all-encompassing methodology or specific set of outlooks, but instead the cultivation of self-reflexivity and an intellectual openness that foregrounds working, researching, thinking, and communicating beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Join us in exploring, envisioning, and staking out what this could look like, what purposes it can serve, and how cycling-related research and activism as a whole could benefit from a CCS framework.
We invite abstracts for posters and presentations that:
- explore visions for Critical Cycling Studies futures;
- reflect on relevant on-going research projects or case studies that push boundaries of discipline-specific approaches;
- rethink, critique, or expand the epistemological premises currently shaping cycling-related research;
- explore opportunities for and benefits of new kinds of interdisciplinary cycling-related research collaborations.
When developing your contribution, consider a few questions: What is a cycle, what is cycling, and how do they shape both cyclists and their social, cultural, political, philosophical, and economic environments? How can we realise a Critical Cycling Studies that is inclusive, interdisciplinary, dynamic, intersectional, sustainable, and diverse?
Presentation formats:
- 20-minute presentations: research presentations will be grouped in small panels, with ample time for discussion. In the spirit of forming an inclusive community, there will be no concurrent panels.
- Posters
- Alternative formats: if you have an idea for a presentation or activity that follows a different format, please reach out and let us know!
Proceedings: presenters will be invited to submit revised versions of their presentations for publication in double-blind peer-reviewed proceedings (publication format and venue tbd).
Program: the event program will run over the course of three days, and will include both academic and extracurricular activities that include keynote presentations, roundtable conversations, non-concurrent paper/poster presentations, discussion panels, sightseeing activities, cycle rides (and more to be announced). To maximise opportunities for community-building and critical dialogue, we expect attendees to join for the full duration of the symposium.
Abstracts due: 16 November 2025 (decisions about accepted presentations and posters will be announced in early 2026).
If you have any further questions or suggestions, please get in touch with the event co-organizers, Andrew Bricker (andrew.bricker@ugent.be) and Martin Zeilinger (m.zeilinger@abertay.ac.uk).